The two verses are the sharpest formulation of the gradual and sudden positions. Shenxiu's mirror requires constant maintenance and a self to do the polishing; Huineng's reply removes the apparatus entirely. Modern scholarship reads the Platform Sutra as propaganda from the southern school, written well after the events, and the historical Shenxiu appears to have been widely respected rather than the striver the text implies. It made no difference to the outcome: the sudden teaching became Chan, and through it Zen, and the story of the illiterate kitchen worker outdoing the establishment became the tradition's self-image.